Gerasim@home
Gerasim@home is a volunteer distributed computing project based on the BOINC platform. The project uses Internet-connected volunteer computers to perform research in discrete mathematics, combinatorial optimization, graph theory, Latin squares, and related computational problems.[1]
The project is one of the few long-running Russian BOINC projects and is operated through the BOINC.ru community.[2]
History
Gerasim@home began in test operation in February 2008.[3] The project was initially created to study distributed computing technologies and heuristic algorithms for solving combinatorial problems.[4]
A notable technical feature of the project was its server implementation using Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and ASP.NET instead of the more common Linux/Unix BOINC server stack.[5]
The project experienced several outages and maintenance interruptions over its lifetime, including extended downtime during 2025 before services resumed.[6]
Why Gerasim@home?
Many problems in discrete mathematics and combinatorial optimization require enormous computational resources due to the explosive growth of possible combinations. Problems involving Latin squares, graph partitioning, and heuristic search methods often become computationally infeasible on conventional single-computer systems.
Volunteer computing allows these problems to be divided into many smaller independent tasks and processed in parallel by thousands of volunteer computers worldwide.[7]
Goal
The project's primary goal is to investigate computational methods in discrete mathematics and optimization. Research topics have included:
- Enumeration of diagonal Latin squares
- Orthogonal diagonal Latin squares
- Heuristic search algorithms
- Graph partitioning problems
- Parallel algorithm decomposition
- Cube-and-conquer methods
- Combinatorial optimization
The project also serves as a practical platform for studying large-scale distributed volunteer computing systems and algorithm scalability.
Methods
Gerasim@home distributes computational work units to volunteers using the BOINC middleware framework. Participants install the BOINC client software, attach to the project, and automatically receive tasks for processing.[8]
The project has historically focused on CPU-based computation but later added support for OpenCL GPU applications on NVIDIA and AMD hardware.[9]
As of 2026, project applications include:
- Decic Fields (CPU)
- Decic Fields (OpenCL NVIDIA)
- Decic Fields (OpenCL AMD)
The project's infrastructure runs on Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server, which is relatively uncommon among BOINC projects.[10]
Applications
Decic Fields
The Decic Fields application is one of the active workloads distributed by the project. It is available for Windows and Linux platforms and supports CPU as well as OpenCL GPU computation.[11]
Project team / Sponsors
The project has been associated with the BOINC.ru volunteer computing community and contributors including:
- Sergey Valyaev
- Eduard Vatutin
- Alexey Belyshev
- Oleg Zaikin
- Natalia Nikitina
- Maxim Manzuk
- Stepan Kochemazov
Several scientific publications connected with the project were produced in collaboration with Southwest State University and other Russian research institutions.
Server statistics
According to the project's server status page, the infrastructure included over 8,000 registered users and more than 13,000 host computers as of April 2026.[12]
The project reported an average computing throughput of approximately 7.5 teraFLOPS.[13]
Scientific results
The project has contributed computational resources toward studies in combinatorics, Latin squares, graph theory, and heuristic optimization methods.
Research performed using Gerasim@home infrastructure has been presented at international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals related to supercomputing and high-performance computing.
Scientific publications
- Vatutin, Eduard, Alexey Belyshev, Natalia Nikitina and Maxum Manzuk. USE OF X-BASED DIAGONAL FILLINGS AND ESODLS CMS SCHEMES FOR ENUMERATION OF MAIN CLASSES OF DIAGONAL LATIN SQUARES. Telecommunications (2023). DOI: 10.31044/1684-2588-2023-0-1-2-16.
- Vatutin, Eduard, Oleg Zaikin, Maxim Manzyuk and Natalia Nikitina. Searching for Orthogonal Latin Squares via Cells Mapping and BOINC-Based Cube-and-Conquer. Supercomputing (2021).
- Vatutin, Eduard and Alexey Belyshev. Enumerating the Orthogonal Diagonal Latin Squares of Small Order for Different Types of Orthogonality. Supercomputing (2020).
- Vatutin, Eduard, Alexey Belyshev, Natalia Nikitina and Maxim Manzuk. Evaluation of Efficiency of Using Simple Transformations When Searching for Orthogonal Diagonal Latin Squares of Order 10. High-Performance Computing Systems and Technologies in Scientific Research, Automation of Control and Production (2020).
- Vatutin, Eduard, Alexey Belyshev, Stepan Kochemazov, Oleg Zaikin and Natalia Nikitina. Enumeration of Isotopy Classes of Diagonal Latin Squares of Small Order Using Volunteer Computing. Supercomputing (2019).
- Southwest State University, Eduard Vatutin, Stepan Kochemazov et al. CENTRAL SYMMETRY PROPERTIES FOR DIAGONAL LATIN SQUARES. Problems of Information Technology (2019). DOI: 10.25045/jpit.v10.i2.01.
- Vatutin, Eduard, Oleg Zaikin, Stepan Kochemazov and Sergey Valyaev. Using Volunteer Computing to Study Some Features of Diagonal Latin Squares. Open Engineering (2017). DOI: 10.1515/eng-2017-0052.
- Vatutin, Eduard. Comparison of Decisions Quality of Heuristic Methods with Limited Depth-First Search Techniques in the Graph Shortest Path Problem. Open Engineering (2017). DOI: 10.1515/eng-2017-0041.
- Vatutin, Eduard, Vitaly Titov and Alexander Belyaev. On the Selection of Optimal Structure Organization of Logic Multicontrollers. MATEC Web of Conferences (2016). DOI: 10.1051/matecconf/20167901084.
Hardware and software
The project supports multiple operating systems and architectures through the BOINC platform.
Supported platforms have included:
- Windows x86_64
- Linux x86_64
- NVIDIA OpenCL GPUs
- AMD OpenCL GPUs
The server infrastructure has operated on Microsoft Windows Server with Microsoft SQL Server database backends.[14]
Community
Gerasim@home maintains an international volunteer community through BOINC statistics services, teams, and forums. The project has participants from more than 100 countries.[15]
The project has also been discussed on BOINC community forums and Reddit, particularly during outages and infrastructure changes.[16]
See also
External links
Contributing
If you're interested in supporting this project, download and install BOINC and attach to the project using its official URL:
Your computer will perform calculations and report results back to the project servers automatically.
- ↑ Gerasim@home. Gerasim@home. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Проект Gerasim@Home. BOINC.RU. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Gerasim@Home. Rechenkraft.net Wiki. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Gerasim@Home. BOINC Wiki. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Gerasim@Home. Russian Wikipedia. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Project News. Gerasim@home. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Vatutin, Eduard.(2017}).Using Volunteer Computing to Study Some Features of Diagonal Latin Squares. Open Engineering. DOI: 10.1515/eng-2017-0052.
- ↑ BOINC official website. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Applications. Gerasim@home. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Gerasim@Home. Russian Wikipedia. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Gerasim@home Applications. Gerasim@home. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Server status. Gerasim@home. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Server status. Gerasim@home. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Server status. Gerasim@home. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Gerasim@home. Gerasim@home. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.
- ↑ Gerasim@Home - message boards not working. Reddit. Retrieved 2026-05-20}.